Weekend in the Desert

On Friday the 30^th of March while still in bed Juanita and I decided to quickly go and visit Johan Jr in Windhoek Namibia for the weekend, we called him and he initially said that he is not around since he has to work on Saturday, flying freight to Walvis Bay on Saturday but phoned back a few minutes later and said that his boss has offered that we fly to Walvis with him and that we could then spend the weekend in the desert and return on Sunday evening! Half an hour later we were on our way to the airport.

Friday evening we had some of the best meat on offer in Namibia at Joe’s Beerhouse in Windhoek and early Saturday morning we were at Eros Airport for the flight to Walvis Bay in the Bay Air Cessna Caravan while Johan Jr. was going to follow us an hour later with a Cessna 210 with the Freight, but the famous desert fog on the coast had other ideas and we ended up taking off in two aircraft about two hours later, when it was reported that the fog was burning off.

Here Juanita is boarding the Caravan

The flight from Eros airport the city airport in Windhoek to Rooikop at Walvis Bay is an hour long and probably one with the most dramatic scenery in the world, starting out over the Khomas highlands and then the change to the Namib Desert ending up on the Atlantic ocean.

We had just touched down in Walvis when Johan Jr. taxied in to meet us on the apron and we quickly transferred our bags to the company Uno and was cruising up along the Long beach between Walvis and Swakopmundt. We just quickly popped in to see what the “Burning Shore” house looked like where Brad and Angelina Pit decided to have their baby.

Jr. booked us rooms at the Deutche Hause in Swakopmundt but before we checked in we went for lunch at the Tug Restaurant on the beach.

We had a fantastic light fish lunch almost suspended above the Atlantic Ocean and washed this down with a few Gin and Tonics. We then had an afternoon nap and later the evening we wandered out on the beach and ran into the crew of a beautiful old DC-6, that was having dinner on the Pier in front of the Strand Hotel. The Captain was Flippie Vermeulen and the first Officer was Tinus Dreyer and one of the Air Hostesses was the daughter of the owner of the DC-6, Chris Schutte. We chatted with them until midnight.

Juanita Johan Jr. and the famous Captain Vermeulen.

One of the stories Captain Vermeulen shared with us, was how, just two months ago he ran out of oil in another DC-4 in Chiredze (Buffalo Range) in the South of Zimbabwe, and had to spend a few hours there waiting for oil to be flown in from Polekwane in South Africa, and there he met Louis who popped in to pick up an injured patient and fly him to Harare.

On Sunday morning me and Jr had a game of squash after breakfast and after a light lunch at Café Anton and a quick drive around the desert to look for an old artist friend of ours that has lived about 10 Km from Swakopmundt we stopped briefly at the Martin Luther Tractor that has recently been restored,it was time to start returning to Windhoek. This time we went inland of the dunes from Swakop to Walvis and was flown back by Jr. and his colleague Riaan van Dyk.


All in all a great weekend - we returned home on Monday morning to resume work and will have fond momories of the beautiful scenery and pleasant people of Namibia.